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 advanced on the 14th of May 1685 to the English peerage under the title of Baron Churchill of Sandridge in Hertfordshire. When the duke of Monmouth attempted his ill-fated enterprise in the western counties, the second position in command of the king’s army was bestowed on Lord Churchill, and on the 3rd of July 1685 he was raised to the rank of major-general. Through his vigilance and energy at the battle of Sedgemoor (July 6) victory declared itself on the king’s side. After the death of Monmouth he withdrew as far as possible from the administration of public business, but both he and his wife remained the favourite attendants of the princess Anne. Whilst on his embassy to the French court he had declared with emphasis that if the king of England should change the religion of the state he should at once leave his service, and it was not long before the design of James became apparent to the world. Churchill was one of the first to send overtures of obedience to the prince of Orange, to whom he had gone on a commission in 1678. Although he continued in a high position under James and drew the emoluments of his places, he promised William of Orange to use every exertion to bring over the troops to his side. James had been warned against putting any trust in the loyalty of the man on whom he had showered so many favours, but the warnings were in vain, and on the landing of the Dutch prince at Brixham Churchill was promoted to be lieutenant-general (Nov. 7, 1688) and was sent against him with five thousand men. When the royal army had advanced to the downs of Wiltshire and a battle seemed imminent, James was dismayed at finding that in the dead of night his general had stolen away like a thief into the opposite camp.

Churchill was sworn as a privy councillor on the 14th of February 1688/9 and on the 9th of April became earl of Marlborough. William felt, however, that he could not place implicit reliance in his friend’s integrity; and, with a clear sense of the manner in which Marlborough’s talents might be employed without any detriment to the stability of his throne, he sent him in June 1689 with the army into the Netherlands, and in the autumn of 1690 into Ireland, where owing to his generalship Cork and Kinsale fell into his hands after short sieges. For some time there was no open avowal of any distrust in Marlborough’s loyalty, but in May 1692 he was thrown into the Tower on an accusation of treason. Though the evidence which could be brought against him was slight, and he was soon set at liberty, there is no doubt that Marlborough was in close relations with the exiled king at St Germains, and that he even went so far as to disclose, in May 1694, to his late master the intention of the English to attack the town of Brest. The talents of the statesmen of this reign were chiefly displayed in their attempts to convince both the exiled and the reigning king of England of their attachment to his fortunes. The sin of Marlborough lay in the fact that he had been favoured above his fellows by each in turn, and that he betrayed both alike apparently without scruple or without shame. Once again during the Fenwick plot of 1696 he was charged with treason, but William, knowing that if he pushed Marlborough and his friends to extremities there were no other statesmen on whom he could rely, contented himself with ignoring the accusation of Sir John Fenwick, and with executing that conspirator himself. In 1698 the forgiven traitor was made governor to the young duke of Gloucester, the only one of Anne’s numerous children who gave promise of attaining to manhood. During the last years of William’s reign Marlborough once more was placed in positions of responsibility. His daughters were married into the most prominent families of the land; Henrietta, the eldest, became the wife of Francis, the eldest son of Lord Godolphin; the second, the loveliest woman at the court, with her father’s tact and temper and her mother’s beauty, married Charles, Lord Spencer, the only surviving son of the earl of Sunderland. Higher honours came on the accession of Queen Anne in March 1702. He was at once appointed a Knight of the Garter, captain-general of the English troops both at home and abroad, and master-general of the ordnance. The new queen did not forget the life-long service of his wife; three positions at the court by which she was enabled to continue by the side of the sovereign were united in her person. The queen showed her devotion to her friend by another signal mark of favour. The rangership of Windsor Park was granted her for life, with the especial object of enabling Lady Marlborough to live in the Great Lodge. These were the opening days of many years of fame and power. A week or two after the death of William it was agreed by the three great powers, England, Holland and Austria, which formed the grand alliance, that war should be declared against France on the same day, and on the 4th of May 1702 the War of the Spanish Succession was declared by the three countries. Marlborough was made commander-in-chief of the united armies of England and Holland, but throughout the war his plans were impeded by the jealousy of the commanders who were nominally his inferiors, and by the opposite aims of the various countries that were striving to break the power of France. He himself wished to penetrate into the French lines; the anxiety of the Dutch was for the maintenance of their frontier and for an augmentation of their territory; the desire of the Austrian emperor was to secure that his son the Archduke Charles should rule over Spain. To secure concerted action by these different powers taxed all the diplomacy of Marlborough, but he succeeded for the most part in his desires. In the first year of the campaign it was shown that the armies of the French were not invincible. Several fortresses which Louis XIV. had seized upon surrendered to the allies. Kaiserswerth on the Rhine surrendered on the 15th of June, and Venlo on the Meuse on the 23rd of September. The prosperous commercial town of Liége with its commanding citadel capitulated on the 29th of October. The successes of Marlborough caused much rejoicing in his own country, and for these brilliant exploits he was raised (Dec. 14, 1702) to be duke of Marlborough, and received a grant of £5000 per annum for the queen’s life. In the spring of the following year a crushing blow fell upon the duke and duchess. Their eldest and only surviving son, the marquess of Blandford, was seized whilst at King’s College, Cambridge (under the care of Francis Hare, afterwards bishop of Chichester), with the small-pox, and died on the 20th of February 1703, in his seventeenth year. His talents had already justified the prediction that he would rise to the highest position in the state.

The result of the campaign of 1703 inspired the French king with fresh hopes of ultimate victory. The dashing plans of Marlborough were frustrated by the opposition of his Dutch colleagues. When he wished to invade the French territory they urged him to besiege Bonn, and he was compelled to accede to their wishes. It surrendered on the 15th of May, whereupon he returned to his original plan of attacking Antwerp; but, in consequence of the incapacity of the Dutch leaders, the generals (Villeroi and Boufflers) of the French army surprised the Dutch division on the 30th of June and inflicted on it a loss of many thousands of men. Marlborough was forced to abandon his enterprise, and all the compensation which he received was the capture of the insignificant forts of Huy and Limburg. After a year of comparative failure for the allies, Louis XIV. was emboldened to enter upon an offensive movement against Austria; and Marlborough, smarting under the misadventures of 1703, was eager to meet him. A magnificent army was sent by the French king, under the command of Marshal Tallard, to join the forces of the elector of Bavaria and to march by the Danube so as to seize Vienna itself. Marlborough divined the intention of the expedition, and while making a feint of marching into Alsace led his troops into Bavaria. The two armies (that under Marlborough and Prince Eugène numbering more than fifty thousand men, whilst Tallard’s forces were nearly four thousand stronger) met in battle near the village of Blenheim on the left bank of the Danube. The French commander made the mistake of supposing that the enemy’s attack would be directed against his position in the village, and he concentrated an excessive number of his troops at that point. The early part of the fight was in favour of the French. Three times were the troops led by Prince Eugène, which were attacking the Bavarians, the enemy’s left wing, driven back in confusion; Marlborough’s cavalry